WALKING PAST Starbucks the other day, I was momentarily startled to see a genie sitting at a patio table.

He was in full regalia, with the loosefitting blouse, baggy pants and shoes with the upturned toes. His flying rug was neatly folded and hanging over the back of the chair. And the bottle he slept in instead of a lamp -- a fine old brandy if I'm any judge -- sat on the table.

Ed Hardy Replica It's not every day you see a genie, even at Starbucks. But then this wasn't any day, for New Year's is just around the corner, and that's when I often bump into my old friend, Cognac the Great. Cognac is a seer, a predictor of the future, and what could be more appropriate this time of year than a good source for New Year's predictions.

We greeted like the long lost friends we are, and I drew up a chair beside him. Catching up on the year that had passed, I delicately avoided any discussion of those few predictions he had made last year that didn't exactly turn out right. Then I noticed he was reading from the Katmandu University Medical Journal. That seemed a bit esoteric, even for him, so I asked why.

Cognac replied that this was research. After all, those predictions he makes aren't just snatched from thin air but are instead cleverly thought-out conclusions based upon tedious study. You know, like my usual newspaper column.

Turns out he was reading about a study that had evaluated what medical patients expected from their doctors. The majority of patients, for instance, expected their doctors to be experienced, skilled and well behaved, and they wanted all their diagnoses to be made quickly and correctly.

They wanted their facilities conveniently located and clean. And they expected their docs to be inexpensive and their medications free. So, of course, I asked Cognac whether he was going to take a crack at the whole health care "reform" thing for some of his predictions.

Cognac answered that the health care issue was something of a hanging curveball. That's because he knows a lot about human nature. He knows that everybody wants something for nothing. And he knows that politicians will always promise something for nothing.

Health care reform is a politician's dream come true. All Cognac has to predict is that, eventually, nobody will be happy with whatever the Washington folks come up with, and he will end up being right.

The practice of medicine is difficult and rarely perfect. And the process is expensive. A magic wand couldn't change this. So for the politicians to promise to make medicine into something both perfect and inexpensive, well, that would just be politicians doing what they do best.

And promising that government will do something better and less expensive, well, where Cognac comes from, that has simply never happened before.

He pointed out that the medical journal article concluded that patient expectations and the realities of medicine rarely matched. He predicts this will not change, regardless of how much the politicians lie or the government meddles. And then he
embroidered patches turned into a cloud of smoke and disappeared into his old brandy bottle.

Dr. Robert Hallstrom is a veterinarian practicing in Pittsburg. His column appears Sundays in the East County Times. Reach him at . The opinions in this column are those solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the newspaper.